Quote:
The Holidays are supposed to be a time for cheer, and yet there's something strangely dismal about tonight. You're out by yourself and you pass by a building completely coated in a strange sheet of ice. When you catch your reflection, you're trapped reliving your loneliest moment. The illusion can last for as long or short a time as you like, but the hollow sensation lingers even after the memory fades. What memory did you find yourself reliving and, now that it's over, what are you going to do to shake this mood?
He didn’t like this. Not one bit. Normally, when he was out on patrol, Vladmirite was fine, content even, to ignore the soul crushing reality that was his duty, his ‘responsibility’ to the negaverse and all he ‘owed’ them. In his mind- it wasn’t much. Sure, they offered him a sense of stability in a way but not much else. He wasn’t some punk kid running around trying to cause trouble, much less be troublesome himself. He was an adult, legally at any rate. Most people assumed he was older than he was by his actiosn, his reservations but that only spoke of their ignorance of him as a person. Really, under it all, he wanted a new start state side. He wanted to enjoy life out of the oppressive expectations his family and the whole ‘go to college, find a nice girl, pop out a few kids and keep the family legacy going’. For one thing, afford college just how again? With what money and support? He barely managed to get the scholarship he’d gotten when younger and now his folks thought oh how ‘easy’ it should be for him. His parents who also had their entire fortunes and futures dropped right into their laps from their parents who managed to get things only because other relatives had died in the war.
A bitter irony that- to come from what equated to blood money to killing people for money… and after being raised in such a good, loving, proud catholic home. Yet another thing he hated- the politics. He thought the US would be better but it reeked of puritan values worse than his own home did. And this, coming from a man who’s mother expected him to have a virgin wife while his father told him to get as many ‘loose American women’ as he could just because he could. The duality was bitter and foul on his tongue.
Jumping place to place, he eventually stopped by a rather abnormal building. It wasn’t cold enough to freeze just yet, but the building was covered in a layer of ice. It might have been abnormal but not odd… if it wasn’t the entire building. But no- this was, and as he looked at it, he frowned and stared at the opaque frozen wall of water before he shuddered- recalling the day he sat at the London International Airport, his suitcase light and his flight delayed. He was leaving it behind. Everything. Family, friends. But he had to. He needed to. They didn’t understand how he just had to move. Get out- have some kind of change. He was tired of his home. Tired of the need to just remain fixed in one spot and be given a role to fill and expected to obey mindlessly.
Shaking off the memory, the illusion of that time re-lived, the agent sniffed back the bitterness and emotions welling up in his chest. He was stronger than that. Being alone was a part of life.
He had accepted that long ago already.
